folklore by Taylor Swift

folklore, Taylor Swift's eighth studio album, was surprise-released through Republic Records on July 24, 2020, a record dreamed up in quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Swift sang at home in Los Angeles while Aaron Dessner in the Hudson Valley and Jack Antonoff in New York City worked on the tracks from their own studios, the three of them co-producing from a distance.

The pop fireworks are gone. In their place: piano, strings, muted drums and mellow ballads steeped in indie folk and chamber pop, with Swift trading diary entries for invented characters and story arcs about escape, nostalgia and romance. "exile", her duet with Bon Iver, is the one that landed on the countdowns. It sat atop the Billboard 200 for eight weeks, and no album sold more in the US that year. When the Grammys came round, it took the top prize, Album of the Year, and Swift became the first woman ever to win that one three times. Evermore followed before the year was out.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.